Anaewen

This is the first I’ll be posting the Adventure Log and it’s starting mid story. For those of you taking a look at the campaign I’ll try to get the last years worth of games summarized. Mostly I’m posting this for the player who missed out on todays game session.

The party followed the group of mixed humanoids through the caverns that were gathering various kinds of spores and fruits. They didn’t seem to notice the party at all, nor did they react to the torches or the orb that was being mage-handed while imbued with a light spell floating above their heads. After spending almost an hour tailing the group of humanoids, the party arrived at a section of a mushroom forest which was devoid of all life, roughly 50’ across. The humanoids gathered in the center and after a few moments the cavern lit up in reddish light. While waiting to see what was going on, the party witnessed a human missing an arm, visibly bleeding, walk into the cleared area. After a few moments the man collapsed. Rushing over they found the man was dead, his right arm severed cleanly just above the elbow. A trail of blood disappeared into the darkness. A column of light seemed to emerge from the ground in the center of the circle. The humanoids took turns jumping into or climbing down into a hole that appeared where the light seemed to be coming from. A few seconds after the last humanoid entered the hole, the light vanished and the portal disappeared.

After heavily debating the situation and checking the pull of the amber disk, the party decided to try to identify the magic that persisted in the area and use the portal, believing that the portal lead to the location of the source stone they were seeking. Ezra set about identifying the magic while the others scouted the area. After roughly 2 hours, Ezra’s identification was interrupted as the portal flared to life again. Out of the portal climbed ~20 humanoids and at the last, another humanoid creature levitated out of the hole. Most appeared to carry satchels. They split off into groups of 4-6 and headed out in different directions. The humanoid creature that levitated out of the portal seemed to lead a large group of them in the direction the trail of blood lead. Following, the party witnessed the creature point in different directions several times. Each time, 4-5 of the humanoids following it would turn and head off the trail without a word. Finally the creature was alone, but it was still following the blood trail.

After ~15 mins of following the creature, it stepped around a large mushroom stalk and as the party approached they could no longer find it. Varis went around one side while Owen went around the other. The sound of a struggle ensued and as Owen stepped around stalk he found Varis in the grip of the creature struggling. A combat ensued and the party realized the creature they were fighting was an extremely powerful mind flayer. It unleashed assaults of psychic energy at the party badly wounding everyone, however the party working together was also able to heavily wound it. Using some kind of teleportation power, the creature blinked away. The party heard movement in the distance and rushed to get back to the portal to stop the creature.

As they arrived, the party saw the portal was already active. Coming out of the portal were many more mind flayers. They counted 3, then 6, then 8. Owen and Varis halted immediately and turned to find some cover in the fungal forest. Ezra advanced to the edge of the growth and unleashed a fireball at the mind flayers. Almost all of them deflected the blast with some kind of kinetic shield. Ezra and Sigmund turned and rushed to find somewhere to hide. Meanwhile Owen proceeded to climb a large mushroom stalk using daggers as pitons. Varis drew a potion, chugged it down, and scaled almost 50’ to the top and rested on the top of the massive mushroom cap. Almost an hour they waited this way, hiding until they were sure the creatures had gone.

Varis tried climbing down the stalk but the anchor for his rope slipped. He swung and was able to sink one of his blades deeply into the stalk and catch himself. He drew his other blade and tried to climb down. After making it about 10’ his grip slipped from the effort as he tried to draw his topmost blade from the stalk. He fell, landing hard but sustaining no serious damage. By this time Owen, Sigmund, and Ezra managed to find each other and the sound of Varis falling made them aware of him as well. Owen made the climb back up the stalk and returned his blade. They proceeded back to the circle to finish identifying the portal, hoping to find a way to activate it and sneak into the domain of the mind flayers. After being interrupted again, they resumed and determined that the portal lead to a place much farther away than the amber disk indicated the source stone was.

They proceeded in the direction the amber disk pulled them towards and found a passage to another chamber. There, they discovered glowing crystals growing out of the walls. While trying to chisel one of them out they disturbed the residents of the cavern. Several different types of myconids assaulted the party but they were able to defeat them.